Important Factors When Scaling a Startup

When a startup scales too quickly, like Twitter did, it can end up hurting a lot of people. But should a startup take its time, it might miss out on business opportunities.

We’re nearly a year into our engagement with gifts startup 800Flower.ae and have played a huge role on the customer engagement side for the digital strategy. Our search teams have startup experience and so we’ve compiled their suggestions for the factors to consider when scaling up a startup.

1. Focus on your strengthsHire people that can offset your weaknesses. That said, invest in attaining enough knowledge that represents the groundwork for being a jack in your weaknesses. Make a list of things you are passionate about and create Venn diagrams with the aim of finding an intersection between areas you are fascinated by. That will be your passion and through it find a problem worth solving which becomes your purpose. The founder & CEO of Centric DXB has hired a world class team to for this very reason.

2. Stay focusedIt’s tempting to please everyone but it is a phenomenal waste of time in the grand scheme of things. We advise our clients to be aware of new opportunities, be better than emerging players that are facilitating the delivery of those demanded services, but remain focused on the ecosystem they understand the most. Twitter grew too fast, focusing on user acquisition and ignoring how many sign ups were humans. As a result you have bots and automated accounts across the web. Quora on the other hand can’t even be viewed by people without them having signed up with not just their real names but also verification links to their social profiles. By focusing on quality and slow growth, they beat the likes of Medium.

3. Hire SlowYou risk facing cultural struggles from hiring too fast and that too with the speed of growth. Hire slow, fixate on training everyone and reward the resources that add the most value overall. Don’t risk a fast paced culture where there is a high degree of tension and perpetual unhappiness. If you have to hire people, have many people join at once on the same day, pace them through a week long orientation process before distributing them to their focus teams. Doing this builds camaraderie and makes cross functional relationships stronger.

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Usman Khalid is the founder & CEO of Centric DXB. He excels in taking the point of view of both our clients and our internal teams - expressing those perspectives, concerns and requirements to the other side. Aspiring clients & partners can reach him on usman.khalid@centric.ae